Aspen names 120 top community colleges

These colleges already have shown high student success rates, consistent improvement over time and “equity in outcomes for students of all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.”

There are 14 Florida community colleges in the top 120, double the total for New York state. None of Tennessee’s highly effective technical training centers made the list; perhaps they didn’t qualify as community colleges.

The Joyce and Lumina Foundations, and the charitable foundations of Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase are helping fund the prize.

It’s “unfortunate” that colleges will have to compete with each other for a paltry $1 million, writes Valerie Strauss on the Washington Post‘s Answer Sheet. “Success” can’t be defined clearly for all schools, she argues. And $1 million won’t draw much public attention these days.

Contests and fund-raisers can be fun and they can come with the most honorable of motivations.

But they should never be a substitute for strong, smart policy that provides resources and commitment and attention where they are needed and that does not rely on corporations or nonprofits with agendas for inspiration or cash.

Community College Spotlight is written by Joanne Jacobs. It provides a forum for discussion and debate about America’s community colleges, which are home to nearly half of all college students in the U.S.
Views expressed on the blog are those of Joanne Jacobs and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The Hechinger Report or the Hechinger Institute. MORE